When you encounter these things and hear them with diligence, you will know how much God gives to those who love rightly—those who become a paradise of delight, causing within themselves to spring up a flourishing tree bearing every kind of fruit, adorned with many fruits.
For in this garden a tree of knowledge and a tree of life have been planted. Yet it is not the tree of knowledge that destroys; disobedience destroys.
For what is written is not without significance: God from the beginning planted a tree of knowledge and a tree of life in the midst of Paradise, showing life through knowledge. Because those at the beginning did not use this knowledge purely, they were stripped naked through the serpent's deception.
For there is neither life without knowledge nor secure knowledge without true life. Therefore the two were planted near one another.
Seeing the force of this, and reproving knowledge practiced apart from the truth of the commandment that leads to life, the apostle says, ‘Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.’
For the person who thinks he knows something without true knowledge, attested by life, has not known; he is deceived by the serpent because he did not love life. But the one who comes to knowledge with fear and seeks life plants in hope, expecting fruit.
Let knowledge be your heart, and let the true Word, received within you, be your life.
If you bear its tree and pluck its fruit, you will always harvest the things desired by God, which the serpent does not touch and with which deception does not mingle. Eve is not corrupted, but is believed to be a virgin;
and salvation is revealed, and the apostles are given understanding, and the Passover of the Lord advances, and the seasons are gathered and set in harmony with the ordered world, and the Word rejoices as he teaches the saints, through whom the Father is glorified. To him be glory forever. Amen.